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To be President... - by Mayra Recio

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I Too Am America
Artwork by Paola Morales

Parents almost always say that they will love their child no matter the gender. Though in sixteen years, when the child comes out to the parents and tells them that she is a boy despite being born a girl, the parents will say that it’s just a phase or that she is not all right in the head. This in turn can lead to parents disowning the child or worse, the suicide of the child. Parents disown their own children for being who they truly are even though before they were born, they had stated that gender wouldn’t matter. But it doesn’t just stop there. Parents, schools, public places, and even an entire state seems to have issues with those who identify as transgender.

As of March 2016, North Carolina has passed a bill that forces any transgender person to use a public bathroom according to their gender at birth, rather than the ones they associate themselves with. The bill managed to pass the state senate 32-0, according to CNN’s article, North Carolina governor signs controversial transgender bill. This is discrimination against the transgender community, since they are human beings after all. It can also be a danger to those same people. Getting judged for merely going to a bathroom is something that no person should have to go through.
These are basic rights that any and all human beings deserve to have and if I were to become President, I would certainly do my best to try and protect them for all. I would also try to prevent something like that bill in North Carolina from happening again anywhere else in the U.S. It’s a definite fact that some people would argue that this is a privilege for those “type” of people, just like they believe that gay marriage is a privilege. In reality, however, if they didn’t have to pay taxes, that would be a privilege. The right to get married or use the bathroom which an individual prefers are just rights that they should have.

The challenges that transgender people have to deal with tends to differ with each person, since they could have accepting people around them to support them; or they could have the opposite in which they are judged and bullied. They are given nasty looks from strangers as they walk to school or to the store. They are given discriminatory nicknames. If racial nicknames aren’t okay, neither should the ones about gender be either. No one knows what a person had to go through to get to that point in their life, their struggles, their accomplishments, nothing. Nothing should make a human being discriminate another, no matter the reason. You wouldn’t want to be unable to do something or be judged for who you truly are, would you?
I know how that feels and I would like to try my best to stop that from happening to anyone else.

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